Message Received

The robotic voice of our message machine intoned that we had only two minutes and 53 seconds of space remaining. It was time to review and delete, but this would not be simple, for our machine is the repository of treasured voices now lost to us. Among blithe reminders of appointments, easy to trash, are what were once mundane check-ins, now rendered poignant and precious. In the fourth saved message, Mom is characteristically chipper as she ends with, “We’ll chat tomorrow!” How I wish that could be. I tear up every time I re-play it.  

 

Fourteenth in the queue, Dave’s brother’s voice is strong as he sings a line from “On the Road Again” and then swings into the birthday song with Deb, recorded as they drove to our house last April to drop off my gift. It seems ages since Steve’s voice was that exuberant and robust, but it was barely seven months ago.  

 

Given that Ma was 95, we knew to hold onto several taped birthday songs, although Dave used to chafe with annoyance at the childish endearment when his mother warbled, “Happy Birthday, my sweet baby.”   We also saved the love she wished our way on Valentine’s Day, which now seems a portent as she continues to send her love from the Other Side in the form of a heart. 

 

The first one appeared the day after she died. I’d taken my morning shower, toweled off while standing on the navy blue bath mat, and stepped aside to pick it up and replace it on its rack. And there it was: a heart in the damp imprint on the mat.  It wasn’t sort-of-a-heart; it was a perfect heart. And after I took a picture, I tried to replicate it, standing this way and that, heels together, heels apart, but I couldn’t readily re-create that precise Valentine shape. 

 

“Love you too, Ma,” I said.

A week later, Dave and I were awash in a welter of bins and boxes as we worked to empty Ma’s small apartment within the available two-week window. Like me, Ma was a fan of both Christmas and teddy bears. She had a lot of teddy bears, and I was guilty of giving her many of those that filled the bins in her storage area and occupied her windowsills, deacon’s bench, and shelves. 

 

I’d emptied one large bin marked “CHRISTMAS,” stuffing black garbage bags destined for Goodwill with assorted angels, Santas, and yes, teddy bears. I left a mid-sized fake fir tree by her front door to carry out on its own as it would take up too much room in a bag or box.  I passed by the tree numerous times over the course of a week as I went back and forth from the apartment with loads for the dumpster or my car.  

 

In the final days, I took a picture of the tree and sent it to Casey along with the text, “Want it?” 

 

“Sure!” she responded, so I took the tree to my car and wedged it in the back seat.  But wait. What was that? A bit of red I’d not noticed before nestled within the branches. Ignoring the prickle of simulated pine needles, I worked my fingers between the limbs and extricated a tiny teddy bear in red pajamas with a miniscule heart pendant at his throat. Some might say I’d just missed it all the times I’d passed, and maybe that’s true, but the tug in my chest let me know it was from her. “Love you too, Ma,” I whispered. 

When someone passes to the Other Side, we yearn to know they’re okay. When my parents died, I wanted them to find each other in some glorious Beyond, but when their deaths were fresh, I wanted to know they were still around; that they were here with me.  My father, in particular, was true to character in sending clear communications, and when Steve left us in September, we were on alert, looking for signs, not ready to let him go. 

 

Last summer, Steve gave us a Rose of Sharon sapling, offspring of the abundant bush at his home. It remained in a pot by our back door through fall and winter; we never got around to planting it.  Finally, in late spring, Dave transferred it to the ground.  It lived, but seemed stagnant, neither growing nor sprouting leaves. The day Steve died, Dave came to me wide-eyed. “Come look!” he said. He led me to the edge of the yard and pointed. On its spindly trunk, the plant had sent forth, finally, one lone blossom. “It’s the Rose of Steve,” said Dave. And so we will always call it. 

 

Deb, Steve’s wife, also searches for signs. Over the past month, a fox has been a regular visitor, lingering beneath the bird feeders, stalking squirrels, and trotting across the lawn between Steve and Deb’s house and their barn. “I call him ‘Sly’,” said Deb. Sly was Steve’s nickname in college, as fitting for a handsome red fox as it was for that handsome young man.

 

Dave’s bathroom looks out over our backyard. It was late September and the leaves had just begun to fall.  “Check it out,” Dave called to me as he stared out the window after his shower. I followed his gaze and saw a heart in the middle of the yard. I felt that tug in my chest and knew Dave felt it too. It was a leaf, but our recognition let us know it was from Ma.     

 

Be it a text, letter, phone call, or … a leaf, rose, bear, fox, or damp imprint, a message sent is as commonplace as the means chosen until the receiving heart tugs in answer.

 

Love you too, Steve and Ma. 

 

  

  

What Will We Do?

Candles are lit and dinner is ready: grilled eggplant and lemon, rice pilaf, and sautéed zucchini. Dave has set Pandora to the 70’s channel and The Band is singing “The Weight.” It is such a Stevie song, one I’ve heard him sing countless times, with Red and Phil at Trinity; with Dave in our basement; and with his sons, Christopher and Trevor, at Old Post Tavern and FTC. Although I’ve been fine all day, I'm weepy and snuffling into a tissue when Dave joins me at the table. 

That’s how it’s been since Steve passed. To our amazement, we’re mostly okay, and then something will strike a chord, triggering a prickle in my nose and a flow of tears. Mostly, I don’t think our hearts are letting us feel fully what we’ve lost. For, from the time Steve was diagnosed with prostate cancer 15 years ago, I’ve worried who will Dave be without his brother?

 

In the early years of our marriage, Dave would sometimes retreat, face closed, his response to my inquiries always an unsatisfying, “I’m fine.” Casey has recently defined that as “Feelings Inside, Not Expressed,” and when I was younger, it made me crazy trying to figure out what was wrong. Once, I called Steve and asked, “Can you come play guitars with your brother, or take him out or something?  I don’t know what’s up with him.”

 

“Is he pouting?” Steve said. “He always has.”

 

Wait. What? Dave has been declared a saint by many, and this was an insight I seized on with relief.

 

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve said. “Just the way he gets sometimes.” 

 

It wasn’t my fault! Such a burden lifted! I still wanted Steve to divert him, but I felt better. So there’s that too: what will I do without Steve?    

 

As required of older brothers, when the boys were children, Steve tormented Dave, staking him out in the backyard, the unwilling cowboy captive to Steve’s victorious Indian. Unmoved by Dave’s wails of “Maaaaaa!” Steve would sit on his chest and say in a voice annoyingly calm, “Why are you crying? All you have to do is eat a spoonful of peanut butter, and I’ll let you go.” 

 

Needless to say, Dave hated peanut butter. 

 

But Steve was also his best friend and protector. “Do you have any idea how many fights I got into because of you?” he once said. Dave spoke with a stutter from the time he was four, a target for the mean kids who pounced on anyone with a frailty; Steve was three years older, and bound to defend him. As much as Steve-n’-Deb became one word, from the time Dave was born, so was Steve-n’-Dave.

 

When Steve and Deb started dating in their teens, they welcomed Dave as the third in their trio. Dave chuckles in recalling a beach picnic with the three of them and Steve Larrabee.  “Deb had to go to the bathroom, so we built a sand toilet for her.  ‘Don’t look!’ she said. So, nearby, we drew the outline of a door with a huge keyhole in the sand, and we boys stood, eyes peering down, hooting as if we were watching. Silly stuff.”

 

“I followed Steve everywhere,” Dave has said as we cuddle together with our memories, stories, and tears. “To the same high school, on dates with Deb, to Trinity, and to Eagle Hill.” 

 

What will Dave do without his brother?

    

 

When first I met Steve, it was a wintry night in 1972. My roommates and I had borrowed trays from the Trinity cafeteria to use as sleds, and headed to a snowy slope on campus where a group had already gathered.  Back then, Steve’s nickname was Sly, and with his confident air, piratical look, long hair, mustache, and high cheekbones, he was cool enough to carry it. As a recent graduate from 12 years of girls’ schools, I was giddy with my newfound freedom and easy proximity to boys, and euphoric that a fun, flirty senior like Sly would be nice to me. 

 

In the spring, he asked if I wanted to go with him to watch his little brother play baseball. I jumped at the plan, and when I met Dave after the game, I discovered he was quite nice too, nice enough to marry as it turned out.  Soon after Steve died, Deb told me, “You were his hand-picked sister.”

 

Around Fairfield, Steve and Deb were fixtures, renowned for their welcoming warmth, genuine interest in others, athletic prowess, and participation in community events. Both turned heads, Deb with her flowing blond hair, Steve with his mane of white, so recognizable as they zipped around town in the red Miata. And prized though it was, when our son Tucker graduated from high school having never driven a standard shift car, Steve tossed him the keys to the Miata and said, “Hey, congratulations!  Let’s go for a spin!” 

 

 

Since his diagnosis in 2005, there have been years of worry, treatments tried, tests taken, results awaited with agonizing fear, all trials bravely hidden by Steve and Deb.  In truth, none of us know how long we have, but it’s a fact we happily suppress. We didn’t have that luxury with Steve, and because we knew time was limited, we created opportunities, and nothing was taken for granted. 

 

We had years of work together at Eagle Hill-Southport, reunions on Block Island, travel, drinks, dinners and guitars at Old Post Tavern. Steve gained a cherished daughter in Trevor’s wife, Lisa, and more recently, we’ve had grandchildren to share: the blessing and balance for worry.  All along, Steve and Deb were stoic in facing together the indignities and hardship of the disease while maintaining those sunny public faces. What courage and energy that must have taken.  

 

It was Christmas, 2015, when my daughter Casey and her fiancé PJ asked Steve to perform their wedding ceremony.  Oh the hugs, laughter, and happy tears… but Deb had just told Dave and me that a recent scan had revealed the spread of Steve’s cancer to his bones. I worried: should I tell Casey to have a Plan B? I said nothing, hoping my brother-in-law - athletic, competitive, handsome Steve –would beat the odds and pull it off.

 

In September of 2016, Steve and I stood arm-in-arm on the steps at the Inn at Longshore, waiting to be introduced as the mother-of-the-bride and wedding officiant. I gestured to all the beloved faces smiling in our direction and whispered to Steve, “None of this would be happening if it weren’t for us.”

 

He looked at me, puzzled, and I said, “If we hadn’t met on the hill, traying at Trinity!” We hugged each other tight and walked down the stairs.

 

My mother always said her one regret was not giving me a big brother, but the Universe had other plans, and gave me Steve.  

 

 

 

 

 

Skin Deep

The young woman bent at the waist, camera held to a squinted eye as she turned the lens for better focus on a pink hollyhock.  On this sweltering sunny day, Dave and I had taken refuge under a shady trellis in the Edgefield Inn's garden, and had noticed her, a colorful blossom herself, amid the profusion of flora.  

Her head was partially shaved, the remaining hair dyed magenta and pulled in a ponytail. Her arms, chest, and shoulders were a swirl of tattoos.  While her look was exotic, her partner appeared scholarly. Dark-haired, bearded, and be-spectacled, he, like us, sat beneath a trellis, and was absorbed in the large book open on his lap. 

We’d seen the couple in passing before, and now, as we had then, as everyone did at Edgefield, we nodded and said hello as we left the garden. 

That afternoon, it was studious John and tattooed Clarissa who settled in at the steamy river pool, close enough to us that conversation was a given. We were not surprised to learn John was a physicist, a scientist like his father, and Clarissa, a tattoo artist. We reminded them of our brief encounter earlier in the garden and Clarissa said, “Lots of people like flower tattoos, so I keep a portfolio of possibilities.  I like to offer a wide range.”

While floating idly or sitting neck deep in water on seats carved into the sides of the pool, we covered John’s degrees and aspirations, but found we had more questions about Clarissa’s field. What was your favorite project? How deep does the needle go?  How do you control the depth? How do you promote speedy healing? And how do you handle a drunken request for a girlfriend’s name inscribed on a butt?

“I never tattoo someone who’s been drinking.  Alcohol thins the blood and there’d be too much bleeding,” Clarissa stated firmly.

Huh. I’d never thought about blood as a complicating factor in tattoo art, but of course it is. Not easy to “paint” with a needle and ink while swabbing up gore.  

“Plus, the image can change some during the healing process, so I include a follow-up to make any adjustments necessary, “ she explained. 

Dave asked, “What do you practice on?” 

“Humans,” said Clarissa.

“Husbands,” corrected John. We laughed as he lifted the leg of his swim trunks to reveal a graceful, flowing image of a bear and two ravens on his upper thigh. Wow. Truth is, although I’d heard the term “tattoo artist” before, I confess I’d not given much credence to the “artist” part; meeting Clarissa and seeing her work convinced me.  If she lived in Connecticut, I’d get a tattoo.

When Dave asked her, “How’s business?” Clarissa mentioned the spike in requests for tattoos around mastectomy scars. I have not sought that route, but told her I’d had the surgery.

She was thoughtful a moment and said, “Do you mind if I ask about the length and process of your treatments?” 

I did not and gave her a run down.  

“My father had a brain tumor,” she said, and described his surgery and chemo, and the gallows humor he employed to keep the family’s spirits up. 

“How’s he doing?” I asked.

“He passed in December,” she said.  Her sunglasses masked her eyes, but she was quiet and still in the water.  She was about 28 years old and had just lost her father. I was tempted to tell her about Mom’s recent death, but I’m never sure when “I know how you feel because I…” builds a bridge of common experience, and when it’s an intrusion into someone else’s story. I decided to hold back, but I knew her pain, and oh, how I felt for her. 

Tattooed, retired, or trying to be trans; liberal… or even more liberal; aware of the fear of a dread diagnosis; bereft of a father or mother: all of us are doing our best in the hot tub of life. If everyone were required to strip to near-naked and spend time together in a warm, salty pool, maybe we’d be gentler with each other.